Under These Conditions
by FeathersMcStrange
Summary: Post Raven & The Swans, someone finally does something about what's happened to G Callen - and what continues to happen to G Callen - by merit of Hetty being continually allowed to manipulate and control his entire life as she sees fit. Gibbs flies out to LA after alarming conversations with both G and Sam, and that is the beginning of the end.


Hetty Lange legitimately terrifies me. Here's why.

If you are deeply committed to the idea of Hetty as a good person who does good things because she cares about her people, and there's nothing wrong, manipulative, or dangerous about what she's done to G Callen, you probably want to find another fic to read.

This is a fic for everyone who watched Raven & The Swans and was left wondering why Hetty is being allowed to get away with what nearly amounts to human trafficking, with taking orphaned, endangered children and warping them into the perfect agents but hurt, damaged people without caring a bit about what harm she's causing.

Please drop me a line and let me know if you wanna see the rest of this verse. I have a lot more where this came from. A lot. More.

* * *

Under These Conditions

Dark Blue 'Verse – Part One – The Catalyst

 _This flood, this flood is slowly rising up  
Swallowing the ground beneath my feet_

 _Tell me how anybody thinks under these conditions so_

 _I'll swim, I'll swim as the water rises up_

 _Started sinking down now all I can see_

 _Are the planets in a row suggesting_

 _It's best that I slow down_

 _This night's a perfect shade of dark blue_

 _\- Jack's Mannequin, 'Dark Blue'_

* * *

The beginning of the end comes on a Thursday. It's an ordinary Thursday, at least until it isn't, until the pin drops and the ball starts rolling.

Abby is the catalyst. She sits in her office and looks at the message she has received, a frown crinkling her usually happy face. Ever since her LA adventure, her Thursday evening Skype date with G Callen – both their schedules permitting – has been one of the highlights of her week. They are improving G's miserable knowledge of cinematic masterpieces, and up this week was supposed to be 'Catch Me If You Can'.

And then came the message so concerning her now. It's short and to the point which of itself is not unusual for G at all. It's the content of the message that gets to her.

' _Sorry Abby. Not up for it today_.'

That is when the worry starts.

That is when it all starts.

She almost runs face first into Gibbs' chest on her way up to find him. He manages to catch her by the shoulders, holding her at arms length and studying her. In an instant, he knows something is wrong.

Not that this is anything particularly difficult to deduce, as the moment she has regained her footing, Abby is off at a hundred miles per hour, words tumbling over each other in an attempt to all leave her mouth before the rest of them.

Gibbs puts a hand on either side of her face, holding her head still and making steady eye contact.

"Start again. Slowly. What happened?"

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Abby restates everything she has just babbled, but at a speed at which Gibbs can actually comprehend what's got her so fussed. He works out eventually the the source of her distress is G Callen. Gibbs knows that since the two of them worked together, Abby and G have become good friends, talking regularly and watching movies together over Skype.

Abby tells him how what with their hectic, unpredictable schedules, it wasn't rare that one of them had to cancel on the other, but every time G cancelled on her he would call and explain, then apologize, crack a joke, and promise they would try again next week.

"He just sent me a two sentence message _, two sentences,_ Gibbs, and that's _it_ ," Abby says forcefully, trying to impress upon him exactly how dire the situation is. "Can you call him for me? Please? Just to check on him." Seeing Gibbs' expression, Abby continues, throwing a pleading note into her voice. " _Please_ , Gibbs, I'm really worried about him. He's sounded. _Off_ , lately. Not like himself at all. Come on, you know what G can get like sometimes."

Yeah, he does know. Which is precisely why he agrees to call the man and check up on him. It's mostly to placate Abby and her tendency to worry that he picks up the phone and dials, though part of it is to assuage his own guilt. It's been months since he's spoken to G, and even before that they'd barely managed to keep in contact a few times a year since Hetty Lange took over for Lara Macy. The fault for this belongs equally to both of them. Be it lack of effort or busy schedules, for one reason or another neither of them have picked up a phone and actually called the other in what feels like ages. As he watches Abby walk away with a more subdued version of her usual enthusiastic stride, Gibbs wonders if whatever's happened to G this time could have been averted if only he'd done a better job of keeping an eye on him.

While the phone rings and rings, Gibbs thinks about G Callen. He thinks, and the longer he thinks the more worried he gets.

It is impossible to be in any way close to G and _not_ worry about him, Gibbs thinks, sitting back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. But this time, it's different. His instincts haven't led him wrong so far, and right now they are telling him that there is something very, very wrong.

"Callen," says an exhausted, annoyed voice on the other end, when the ringing finally stops and the line clicks on.

"You sound like crap."

He hears G snort. "Thanks Gibbs."

Gibbs waits a few moments before he speaks again, his voice carefully casual. Nonthreatening. "So, Abby's worried about you. Says you cancelled on her and it wasn't like you."

"Well, you can tell her there's nothing to worry about."

 _Except everything in your voice is telling me she has every reason to worry,_ Gibbs thinks. G goes on before he can figure out what to say.

"I'm just not up for it right now. It's been kind of a... a _long day._ " Those last two words are all but sneered down the phone, and a cold knot forms in Gibbs' chest.

"How do you mean?" he asks, still in that forcedly calm voice.

A heavy gust of breath whooshes like static interference from G's end. "I just mean it was a long day, alright?" His voice is shuttered in iron curtains.

There are several long seconds where neither of them says a word and Gibbs listens to the slightly ragged sound of G breathing. Some days it is easier to get the truth out of G than it is other days. Today is apparently not going to be one of the easy ones.

"I've been thinking about taking a trip soon," Gibbs says finally, evenly.

"Oh?" G sounds half bored, half suspicious, and all wondering why the hell Gibbs is telling him this in the first place.

"It's been a while since I've been to LA."

"I've been thinking about going on a trip too," G says. The tone in which he says it sends a chill down Gibbs' spine. "See if I can track down any of the others."

Alarm bells blare impossibly louder in Gibbs' mind. "Others?"

"Of course, they're probably mostly dead by now," continues G as if he hasn't heard Gibbs' response at all. Maybe he hasn't. "Hunter and Sullivan are. Grace almost was. Still, even if they're gone, I'd like to find them. Pay my respects. After all, I'm one of them. Y'know, I think I've survived the longest out of all of us. Wonder how long I'll keep that record..."

The things he is saying are warning signs taller and brighter than the Chrysler Building, and that last sentence is one warning sign too many, sending any last hope Gibbs had of this all being an overreaction on Abby's part crashing to the ground like so many Jenga blocks.

"Callen, what the hell are you talking about?" he asks, hoping that for once in his life G will actually give the whole story about what's going on with him.

"Nothing," responds G, seeming to have snapped out of it and realized what he was saying. "Sorry. It's nothing. I don't know why I said that. It's just been a really long day. Look, thanks for calling, but I'm really not up for much of a conversation tonight. Rain check?"

"Sure. Goodnight, Callen."

"Night Gibbs."

The other end goes dead within seconds, and he is left alone in a rapidly darkening building. Whatever's going on in Los Angeles, Gibbs doesn't think it's going to just sort itself out the way things usually do with G. Staring down at the phone in his hand, he makes the executive decision to call Sam Hanna. If anybody would know what's happened to G, it's him.

Gibbs thinks again, as the phone rings, about the person he's calling. Over the years, he has spoken to Sam Hanna only a handful of times, and it's not a comforting thought that every time they have spoken thus far, it has been due to some G Callen related crisis. He can still hear the way Sam's voice sounded the day he got back to DC, telling him how G had been targeted in a drive-by just after he'd left, shot six times, and it didn't look like he would make it.

Except G did make it, as if he literally lived to prove people wrong. And since then every time Gibbs looked at his ringing phone and saw Sam Hanna's number, he would wonder if this would be the time the universe finally threw something at G that was so big it crushed him.

It hasn't happened yet, but as he waits and hopes it's not too late for Sam to pick up, Gibbs wonders if it just might have.

Sam answers the phone with a bewildered greeting. Usually it's him calling, not the other way around, and the tone of their previous conversations has them both on edge.

"It's Callen," Gibbs says without wasting time on preamble or pleasantries.

"Of course it is," Sam sighs, and had it been anyone else, Gibbs would have assumed he was irritated.

"I think something's happened to him." As he's speaking, Gibbs absently wonders if it's as weird for Sam to be on the receiving end of that statement as it is for him to be delivering it. "He cancelled on Abby and apparently it was out of the ordinary for him, and she made me call to check on him and... I'm glad I did. Something is _wrong_."

"Yeah, I..." Sam trails off and clears his throat. "I was just thinking I should probably call you, actually, I didn't know who else could help."

"Hanna, what the hell happened to him."

"That's the thing, I don't know."

That throws Gibbs for a loop. "Elaborate." It isn't a request.

"I can't, not over the phone at least. I still don't really get what's going on, and- Look, something's happening out here, and it's not alright and I don't want to think about how this could end for him if something isn't done about it. Long story short, I think we need your help. I think _he_ needs your help. We can't handle this in-house, it's too big for us."

Silence stretches on for several moments while Gibbs processes what Sam has said. There's a hollow sort of ache in his stomach, apprehension and foreboding clenching into a knot.

"I'll be there in the morning," he says eventually, and closes the phone.

The building seems suddenly very large and very empty around him. Gibbs sits back at his desk and stares at the phone now laying forebodingly silent next to his keyboard. A lot has happened, for a period of about ten minutes in which nothing has actually happened. After about a minute of trying to process all the information he's just received, Gibbs decides to do what he does best and compartmentalize. First things first, he needs to tell Vance he needs to take off for a few days. Hopefully, the director won't raise a fuss about it. If he needs to, Gibbs will tell him there's a family emergency.

(Which, really, is not exactly a lie.)

Vance's office is mostly darkened when he reaches it. It seems he's caught the man just in time, about the leave after a very long day.

"Gibbs," Vance says with only mild surprise, sitting back down in the chair he'd been halfway out of when Gibbs knocked and walked in. "You're here late."

Passing up the obvious response of 'so are you' or some pointed allusion to pots and kettles, Gibbs jumps straight to the point.

"There's a situation in Los Angeles."

Eyes narrowing, Vance crosses his arms. "Explain. I'm listening."

"I'm not asking you to intervene." Not yet. "I'm just asking for leave to handle it myself." If I can. "Just a couple of days to go down there and sort things out." Seeing Vance's expression, Gibbs holds up his hand. "You and I both know I have the vacation time."

"Alright," concedes his boss. "You do."

"We have no open cases and it's the weekend. I was hoping to leave in the morning." He conveniently leaves out the part where he's already booked the flight.

"Your team's off rotation anyway, I see no problem with that."

Gibbs is turning to leave when Vance calls after him.

"If it does become something the agency needs to... intervene in, you'll let me know."

Not a request. It's becoming somewhat of a theme.

Something about the way he says it catches in Gibbs' mind.

"Something I should know about, Vance?" He shifts to the side and folds his arms in a mirror of Vance's posture. "Is something going on out there we need to be worried about?"

"Nothing I'm not already aware of."

Somehow, this is not comforting information. But for the moment, Gibbs has to get down to Abby's lab before she leaves, and so he lets it drop and vows to keep a close eye on things while he's in Los Angeles. He says goodnight to Vance almost robotically, mind already two thousand six hundred and seventy-one miles away on the West Coast.

Abby is anxiously waiting when he reaches the basement. She's on him in a moment, eyes wide and apprehensively biting her lip.

"Gibbs! Did you call him? Did he answer? What did you say? What did _he_ say? Is he alright? Did-"

"One at a time, alright?"

With a miserably worried expression, Abby nods. "So? Did you call him?"

"I did," Gibbs says. "He's... Not doin' so great. You were right to tell me. I'm flying down there first thing tomorrow. Hanna thinks they need my help. Thinks Callen needs my help."

"Wait, you talked to _Sam_?" If she looked worried before, Abby now looks convinced the world is about to end.

"Couldn't get a straight answer out of Callen, so I called Hanna. Figured if anybody had an idea what's going on, it'd be him."

"And?"

With a look that says 'I'm getting there', Gibbs shakes his head. "He was really vague about what's going on. I get the feeling he might not entirely know either."

What was theoretically supposed to be a simple phone call to placate Abby's concerns has quickly spiraled into not just the realization that there's something seriously wrong in LA and with G in particular, but also the even more unwelcome realization that whatever it is, it is deep and dangerous enough for the man's own best friend to directly ask Gibbs for help with it. His relationship with Sam is cordial enough, but it's not like they're likely to ask one another for a big important favor out of the blue. Gibbs and Sam's main point of commonality has always been a mutual investment in G Callen's continued presence on this mortal coil. Truthfully, nothing about this is quite so genuinely alarming to Gibbs as Sam plainly and openly asking for his help. That he believes the problem to be 'too big; for the Los Angeles team to handle 'in house' doesn't leave good conclusions to jump to, and so in an effort to prevent himself from jumping to worst-case scenario conclusions, Gibbs tries to put it all out of his mind.

"I would call the team, tell them where I've gone, but it's too late," Gibbs says. "Can you-"

"I'll tell them. I'll be vague, promise, I know how private G is." Lifting her hand to her lips and turning it like a key in a lock, Abby smiles. "Can't spill what I don't know, so."

"Tell Tony he's in charge, he'll love that." With a last, uncharacteristically uneasy look around the room, Gibbs makes eye contact with her again. "He's gonna be okay, Abs. Whatever's going on in LA, we're gonna figure it out. I promise."

As her smile tightens and she nods and walks away, Gibbs hopes he hasn't just lied to her.

* * *

When the cab pulls up in front of it, Gibbs notes that the airport is relatively busy, for four thirty in the morning. This being DC, he is not particularly surprised by this, even if he would prefer not to have to deal with a multitude of strangers at this hour. That is part of the reason Gibbs travels early in the morning or late at night, aside from a mere personal preference towards it. The way he sees it, the fewer people around, the better. He shakes his head and pays the cabbie, then gets out and walks inside, sighing and making his way to the ticket counter to print his boarding pass.

The woman behind the counter with hands that shake with barely disguised exhaustion kind of looks like Abby when she smiles. The man in line behind Gibbs has G's eyes. He wonders absently as he tucks the boarding pass into his jacket if he's seeing people he cares about in the faces of strangers because the similarities are really there or of he's just focused so strongly on them that his senses have fallen victim to confirmation bias.

As he makes his way through a number of lines to various desks and gates, Gibbs thinks about why he's there in the first place. He wonders if the reason he's about to board a five am flight across the country is because he thinks interfering in whatever is going on with G will make the brick of guilt sitting in his chest like lead go away, or because he thinks this is a time he can step up and have the back of someone who needs it. Maybe a little of both, he concludes, and best not to think too hard about it. There have been enough times in G Callen's life when someone has considered doing something to help him and ultimately deemed it not worth the time.

During the layover in Chicago, Gibbs looks impatiently at his watch, still set to DC time, and realizes absently that Tony, Tim, and Ziva must be arriving at work just about then. Despite not being on-call, and today being a Friday, he anticipated that, with the backlog of paperwork bogging them down at the moment, all three of them are probably settling down at their desks, likely complaining about the indignity of being in the office so early on a Friday in order to do paperwork. But he knows his people, Gibbs thinks, and as surely as his next plane has begun boarding, he knows they're there. It's going to be a long, long day.

* * *

In an unprecedented turn of events, Tony is conveniently the first one Abby has cause to encounter that Friday morning. Having been up worrying for the majority of the previous night, the Caf-POW! Tony deposits beside her keyboard is welcomed by a slightly addled smile of thanks. Tony notices immediately how her usual chipper effervescence seems diluted, and frowns, leaning against her desk and folding his arms.

"Good morning, sunshine. Any reason you're so down today? It can't be work on a Friday, you love this place."

With a heavy sigh, Abby takes a deep drink from the red straw and raises troubled eyes towards him. Her voice is as dulled as her gaze when she speaks.

"Gibbs took time off, he's out of town for the weekend."

Tony blinks at her once, twice, three times, completely sure he's misunderstood her.

"Gibbs."

"Yep."

" _Leroy Jethro Gibbs_. Took time off. _Willingly_."

Abby gives a miserable nod.

"What _happened_?"

"G Callen happened."

More startled blinking from Tony. "Oh. _Oh_."

"Yeah. So, you're in charge until he's back, if anything happens. It probably won't, but..." She waves a hand dismissively.

"He say what's up with Callen?" asks Tony, so troubled by the idea that something could be so wrong that his boss decided to take time off to deal with it that his mind bypassed the excitement of being in charge entirely. It's not that he and G are good friends, exactly, but their paths have crossed enough for the thought of something awful happening to him to be far from something Tony is okay with.

"No."

That is clearly all Tony is going to get out of her on that topic, so he sighs, squeezes Abby's shoulder, and makes to leave.

"Let me know if there's any news," he throws over his shoulder on his way out the door.

Abby agrees with another hand wave, turning back to her computer.

When Tony gets upstairs, Ziva and Tim are waiting for him, Ziva behind her desk and Tim perched on the edge of it.

"Where's Gibbs?" Ziva asks when Tony gets within earshot. Thinking about Gibbs, G Callen, and emergencies, Tony gives it a moment of consideration before answering.

"He had something" _someone_ "really important to take care of."

* * *

There's a text on Gibbs' phone when the plane lands at LAX. It's from Sam, and reads [Sorry I couldn't make it myself. Sent someone to get you. Detective Marty Deeks, you can't miss him, just look for the guy who looks like a cross between a golden retriever and a mop.]

If not for the circumstances, Gibbs might have snorted a laugh.

With an overnight pack slung across his shoulder, he makes his slow way off the plane, then through the airport. Across a semi-crowded waiting area, Gibbs spots a blond man, looking every couple of seconds up from his phone, around at the crowd, then back down to his phone. Taking in the mess of curls, wide blue eyes, and general lankiness, Gibbs nods and heads over, stopping right in front of the man with the phone.

"Marty Deeks?"

The blond's head shoots up and he grins widely. "You must be the guy I'm waiting for. Gibbs, Sam's friend, right?"

Gibbs gives the retriever/mop a hard, calculating look, nods, then sets off for the doors without so much as a 'hello'. Deeks is left to scramble after him, slipping out the door behind him just before it swings shut. He stands awkwardly on the sidewalk behind Gibbs as if waiting for instructions.

The day is sunny and warm. Gibbs looks around, taking in the hurried airport patrons rushing into and out of the building behind him, hailing taxis out at the street. It has indeed been a very, very long time since he's been in Los Angeles, and he honestly can't remember a time he was ever in California that wasn't work related.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Gibbs reminds himself that while this trip may not be work related, he still has a job to do here.

A slightly nervous chuckle draws his attention to Deeks, who is looking at him expectantly, bouncing a little where he stands.

"So," Deeks says, "did you have a hotel already, or are we headed straight to the office, or what? Sam didn't say, so..."

"Office," is Gibbs' immediate, automatic answer. There will be time to sort out hotels when he's seen G for himself and spoken to Sam. "Where's your car?"

The ride to NCIS's LA base of operations isn't what Gibbs would describe as his most pleasant or tension free car ride ever. Something about Deeks reads as off to him, despite this being literally their very first meeting. His constant stream of chatter could be likened to Tony, if it wasn't for the edge to Deeks' voice. It's similar to what Gibbs had heard in G's voice the previous night.

Could the same... _incident_ be what's effecting everyone from the West Coast? Gibbs, oddly enough, hopes so. The more people involved in whatever is going on, the more light to be shed on it. On the flip side, however, the more involved parties, the more potential fallout, and that thought is a sobering one indeed.

"Here we are," Deeks announces, relieved.

The new building doesn't look like much from the outside at least, Gibbs notes, taking in the chipped, peeling paint and the condemned notice on the door. Once inside, though, it becomes apparent that looks can be quite deceiving. The inside of the building is at a stark contrast to the outside of it, clean and new looking, with the hum of people talking floating through the air.

"Hey, over here!" Sam's voice rings out from an arrangement of four desks. G's head shoots up from its bowed position at his own desk, expression morphing to one of shock when he sees Gibbs standing in the hall with Deeks. It's clear from this look that Sam has obviously neglected to mention Gibbs' visit to him.

"Hey," Gibbs says in greeting, walking over and meeting Sam halfway. He shakes the offered hand, taking in Sam's tight smile, the troubled look in his eyes.

"Thanks for coming," Sam says, too low for G to hear.

 _Speak of the devil,_ Gibbs thinks as G rounds Sam's elbow and he is presented with his first good look at the object of everyone's concern. To put it bluntly, G Callen looks like hell. Every muscle in his body appears to be tensed, and smudges of exhaustion under his eyes tell of too many missed hours of sleep. There's an air of unease in the room, and something about the edgy way Kensi and Deeks keep shooting looks at G then at each other is pinging Gibbs' renouned gut instinct. There is even discomfort in the occasional tremor running through the hand G has extended to him. Odd from such a usually tightly emotionally buttoned down person, Gibbs muses, shaking it. The slight shivers are pronounced enough that Gibbs can feel them.

"I thought you were kidding about coming to LA," G says, quickly rearranging his features into a look of easy geniality.

"Nope," answers Gibbs simply, curbing the instinct to look over at Sam.

After saying a quick hello to Kensi, Gibbs follows G over to his desk. The others keep a respectful distance, and Gibbs leans against the desk with his back to the rest of the room, giving the semblance of privacy. The question as to why, exactly, Gibbs is here isn't delivered with the sharpness he is expecting; there is no venom in G's voice. Gibbs had been prepared for a lot of things – betrayal, anger, indignation, the list goes on – out of G when he'd showed up, but so far aside from a slight shade of suspicion G seems unbothered by it.

Ultimately, Gibbs has a feeling G doesn't buy his excuse of 'just here for a visit, checking in on anyone, missed the sunshine' as to why he's there in Los Angeles, but luckily for Gibbs at least, that seems to be low on G's list of priorities.

As the OSP team finishes up paperwork and wraps up loose ends from their most recent case, Gibbs finds himself free to wander around the office itself. The kind of training he has had in the art of blending in and remaining undetected offers him the unique opportunity of being able to navigate the building as if he belongs there, passing unnoticed as agency personnel go about their respective days. It is in the corridor up by the ops center that had so impressed Tim that Gibbs gets his first look at the infamous woman who took over from Lara Macy.

From behind, she doesn't look like much of a threat. Henrietta Lange does not cut a very imposing figure, quite small, wearing a nondescript starched blue jacket. Gibbs leans against the wall and watches her speak to the young woman in front of her. The girl on the receiving end of what Gibbs assumes is a lecture looks hardly more than a kid, though given the number of years under his own belt, his stance on that might be a bit skewed. He takes his focus off Lange for a moment and studies the girl. Gibbs has never met her before, not the last time he was out here with McGee, so she must be a relatively recent addition.

The girl is rather small herself, though still taller than Lange. Her hair is a dark, brown shadowed red, and her features are delicate. She alternates staring at her shoes and trying to meet her boss's eyes, while her hands worry at the cuffs of her sleeves. Every so often she will nod or say something in response to whatever Hetty is saying. Eventually the dressing down or whatever it was is over, and the girl practically bolts away the moment Hetty turns away to head back to her office. As the distressed young woman passes him, Gibbs notes that she looks inches from tears.

He looks back toward Hetty Lange and his eyebrows raise. Something's going on here. From the responses – or rather lack of them – from everybody else who had presumably witnessed the scene that just played out in front of him, this isn't exactly noteworthy behavior. Gibbs hadn't been able to make out what Hetty was so displeased with, but he can't imagine what sort of thing – outside of a situation that had blown a big op or _cost someone their life_ – could warrant that sort of dressing down in a professional setting.

Suddenly Gibbs becomes aware of something out of the ordinary against his pinky finger. He turns to look at the wall and frowns, distracted now from what he's just seen by the tiny electronic device affixed into a crack in the wall. It doesn't look like much when just giving the wall a cursory glance, but if he peered close enough it was obvious that it was a microbug. Someone for some reason has bugged the office wall, and Gibbs can imagine no scenario in which that someone was an enemy force. How could they have gotten access and gone undetected?

On a hunch, he looks around, and sure enough, minute inspection of his surroundings reveal several more bugs and even a few fiber optic cameras, tucked into the leaves of the decorative palm trees and in the creases of the stairway hand railing. Someone has _very thoroughly_ bugged what Gibbs assumes is the entire building. He has no idea if the surveillance genuinely covers the whole office and there's no way to find out without going over the whole thing inch by inch, but he has his suspicions about it.

However, as off-putting as everything has been so far, the most interesting and genuinely troubling thing happens when Gibbs quietly makes his way down to where Hetty now stands amid the agents' desks, talking with G whilst Sam, Kensi, and Deeks look on. Along with stealth, another thing Gibbs is highly trained in is the art of reading situations. And though he finds himself once more out of the realm of earshot, this situation has a lot to say just from the body language of those involved.

From everything he has heard, G and this woman are very close, and yet you wouldn't be able to tell so from the way they stand with each other right now. If Leroy Jethro Gibbs were the type of man to walk around making metaphors, he might say that G and Hetty both appeared to be people standing on some very, very thin ice. One wrong move and the illusion of a normal interaction will shatter, plunging the both of them and everyone around them into icy reality.

On the topic of those around them, Gibbs notes that both Kensi and Deeks seem very uncomfortable with Hetty's presence. They keep looking at her, then to G, then back at her, seemingly on the verge of saying something but biting it back every time the words rise too close to the surface. Every so often they shoot looks at each other; the conspiratorial, bothered looks of people who _know something_ , and who know that the person standing next to them is the only other soul alive who knows it too.

For his part in all this, Sam looks... wary. There is no open dislike on his face, no challenge posed to an authority figure that from all Gibbs has heard does not take kindly to being confronted, but there is a deep, heavy note of mistrust written over the man's face. Sam appears to be judging the air between Hetty and G, taking in and cataloguing Hetty's hand on G's desk, the shuttered, defensive posture in the way G is turned away from her, and the look on his face as he absorbs all this visual information is one Gibbs has seen before. He's seen it in his own people, in times when someone had a gun to their head and someone else was trying to figure out how to get them out of it without the captor pulling the trigger.

The feeling that he needs to have a serious conversation with Sam Hanna abruptly swells up and increases tenfold.

Luckily for Gibbs, Sam seems to be on the same wavelength, as the moment Hetty leaves and Sam spots him, he makes a beeline over to Gibbs with an only slightly strained smile on his face. He wastes no time before getting straight to the point.

"Come to dinner with the family tonight." It's a sudden, unexpected offer, and Gibbs frowns.

"I probably had better stay with Callen, see if I can work out what's going on with him."

Despite the circumstances they find themselves having this conversation under, Sam smiles. "He was included in the previous statement. He promised Michelle and the kids he'd come by like a month ago, they've been asking about him. You coming or what?"

"Alright," Gibbs concedes, feeling a measure of relief rush through him at what Sam has said. 'He was included in the previous statement.' It is a comfort to know that, while Gibbs himself seems to have dropped the ball in terms of keeping up with G, someone has his back.

Dinner with the Hanna family is a breath of fresh air. Gibbs enjoys talking with Sam, G, and Sam's wife Michelle immensely, and while Kamran's age makes it hard to look at her without being reminded of Kelly, the little girl is a sweet kid. She seems to completely adore G, and immediately after dinner drags him off into the backyard to show him something he has to see 'right away, Uncle G!' Once G has obligingly followed Kamran out of the house, Michelle stops clearing the dishes, Sam puts down the rag in his hand, and they both turn to Gibbs.

"Something happened with G and Hetty during the case we just finished," Sam says in a deadly serious, hard voice. Gibbs folds his arms across his chest, looks from one worried face to the other, and nods.

"Alright. I'm listening."

Sam lays out the situation before them, from the behavior from Hetty over the years that he has always seen as questionable, to the more recent, increasingly alarming events. It cumulates ultimately with a confrontation that was not witnessed by Sam himself, but by Kensi Blye and Marty Deeks, who approached Sam about it later.

That conversation isn't one he is going to forget. Not for a long, long time. Kensi had lead the way over, Deeks hovering nervously behind her. In the time that he'd known her, Kensi had never been the kind of person to tackle a problem with apprehension and hesitation, but that was all Sam had seen on her face that night. She'd said 'hey, Sam' with a jolting awkwardness that brought him up short. This recent case had hit them all hard – G especially, something about Grace had gotten to him – and Sam's senses were on high alert to anything else going wrong. Going off the looks on Kensi and Deeks' faces, something definitely had.

"Callen just got in a fight with Hetty," Kensi had said, looking at him with something unnerving in her eyes. "They yelled at each other, something about 'how many' there were and how there were 'a lot', and it was something to do with Grace. Callen also mentioned Hunter and Sullivan, along with himself. I don't know what happened there, Sam, but I'm worried about him."

"Yeah, seriously, dude seemed wrecked," put in Deeks, which drew a sharp look from Kensi thanks to his cavalier language. "I mean, it was bad. Whatever just went down, it was _bad_."

They'd gone on to explain that they'd tried bringing it up with G himself, but that conversation had gone a whole lot of nowhere, which left them standing there in front of Sam, figuring that, as they usually did when confronted with a major G Callen related problem, the best course of action was 'go get Sam'.

It's hard to find a way to explain this to Gibbs, and it takes a long time before Sam locates words that feel even halfway correct.

"They told me they overheard some... scary shit, from Hetty and G the other day. Something to do with the way he grew up, and others that grew up like him and... And her having a hand in it. I gotta tell you, it was the last piece of a puzzle that's been building for a while that makes me think there's something going on with her that shouldn't be." While Sam's voice and face still carries the serious, intensely insistent note that it has since the beginning of all this, Gibbs also notices there's a slight hesitation there, a bit of a waver in his tone that suggests he doesn't carry complete confidence in what he's saying.

Well, no. Not in what he's saying itself, but more whether or not he should be saying it.

"My husband is holding back here, Agent Gibbs," Michelle Hanna says, bracing one hand on the counter and propping the other one against her hip. Anger rolls off her in waves, the same sort of righteous, protective resentment that Gibbs has seen out of Sam himself, when someone he cared about has been endangered. "It's a lot worse and a lot less kind than he's making it sound. I haven't heard it all, but what I have heard is enough. Henrietta Lange is out of control, and mark my words right now, if someone doesn't stop her – and _soon_ – people are gonna start dying."

The hesitation on Sam's face lessens slightly as he listens to Michelle talk. It's clear to Gibbs that he wholeheartedly agrees with everything Michelle is saying, even if he's cautious to admit that.

"She does really questionable things, makes decisions that put people on the line, and she does it without really considering the consequences," Sam says, seeming to be picking through his vocabulary for just the right words to describe what, exactly, he wants to make Gibbs understand about his boss. "She's playing chess with people's lives, and G is her favorite piece. Hetty's favorite tool is lying and manipulating people – mostly us, mostly _her own team_. The ends justify the means to her, but not to me, not anymore. Not when G's on the line like this." He cuts himself off with a harsh sigh, looking around the room and shaking his head before going on. "To be honest? I'm scared for him. You know him, Gibbs. You know what he's been through, what his life's been like. We've learned some things about Hetty and her involvement in his past, his family, that aren't pretty and what happened the other day is the last straw for me."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Gibbs asks, mind several hours in the past, to his phone call with G, remembering how he'd talked about 'the others', remembering how many holes exist in G's history, and how ugly what Gibbs does know of his friend's past is. A look outside shows him G crouched down looking at something that Kamran is excitedly gesturing at.

"We want you to initiate an investigation," Michelle answers. Her voice is steel and her expression is just as hard. "Everything Sam said is true, but it's more than just G. This is bigger than a dangerous personal relationship, Agent Gibbs. Every day that they go out into the field under her command is another day that they are all in far more danger than they should be. The things I have heard about her? I don't want to lose my husband, my children's father. And you know what, I don't want to lose G either, god help me, I've gotten rather attached to him. If she is left with the power she has now, sooner or later, someone I care about is going to die."

Gibbs nods slowly, thoughtfully. There's a plan of action already forming in his mind, the suspicions that have lurked at the back of it since his phone call with G confirmed tenfold.

"I don't think being a manipulative chessmaster is something she can be officially fired over, but from what I've heard, I'm sure there's something."

"So you'll help?" Sam sounds cautiously relieved, like a weight that's hung over him for years and gotten heavier by the day has finally begun to be lifted. "I can't lose him to this, Gibbs. I can't lose him to her endless vendettas and his blind faith in her. If that makes me selfish, if wanting her _away from him_ makes me selfish then I can live with that, but I. I don't have the power to stop her myself. She'd override me in a heartbeat, and probably either fire me or ship me off to god knows where. But you, Gibbs, you have connections and power that you can use to make her stop. I _can't_ lose him to this."

"You won't," Gibbs says, eyes trained on the subject of their conversation, outside laughing at something Kamran has said. There's none of his usual enthusiasm in the laugh, though. He's trying for Kamran's sake but it's hollow. Gibbs can see it on his face. "I'll do everything I possibly can to make sure you won't." He looks from Sam to Michelle, then out at G again. "You have my word on that."

"Thank you," says Sam earnestly, sincerely, and that is as far as the conversation gets before G and Kamran head back inside.

* * *

Back in DC, in his own office, Gibbs wastes no time making straight for Vance's office. He rushes right past Tony, Tim, and Ziva, at least two of whom call after him, but he ignores that, focused solely on his goal. The door bangs agains the wall as he opens it with a heavy shove, walking right into Vance's office without formality or pretense, coming to stand right in front of the Director's desk.

"We need to talk about Hetty Lange."


End file.
